It's theoretically possible that the D'ni noun bahntahno and verb tenee have no connections with anything else known from the language, in which case any attempt to interpret the inscription seen all over the city and in the neighborhoods would indeed be pure speculation. But the very fact that the sentence is so ubiquitous, combined with the absence of any direct hint from either Cyan or the DRC about what it signifies (assuming they know), suggests that it was intentionally left for us to puzzle out the meaning ourselves from resemblances of these words to other known D'ni.

If bahntahno is a compound, then the most likely word with a known meaning that it could contain is ahno 'water'. This is somewhat promising, because we actually have another compound word with ahno 'water' as the second element, namely gahrahno which is literally 'great-water' and probably corresponds in meaning to English ocean or sea. So perhaps rebahntahno may refer to some water feature in the cavern, such as the lake, the waterfall above the Great Zero, or the fountain found in each neighborhood. Or it might be something less concrete like "water sound" or "water-wave" or "watershed."

The verb tenee might be derived either from ten which means 'simple' or from nee which means 'new, fresh, clean'. The second is an attractive possibility because this word also occurs in the name D'nee (or D'ni) which means literally 'again-new', understood in the sense of "New Start" or "New Beginning." It would make sense if this idea of newness which was central enough to provide the name of the D'ni should also be incorporated into a widely displayed proverb or motto in their city.

And we should note how these two potential connections of components of the words re-bahntahno and tenee-en go very well together. Because water is a typical agent for returning freshness to a living being, or restoring cleanness to a place or object. The overall sense of the motto might be: "The fountain refreshes you"; or "The waterfall washes you clean"; or "The water all around you brings you together in a new way."

Zeke365 sent a message to RAWA and waited a few months for the reply... but he did eventually get one.

Quote:

Translation: The Island welcomes you.

Literal translation: .the-island welcomes(it) you(pl)

Phonetic pronunciation: .re-bahn-tah-no tay-nee-en shem-tee

D'ni font: rebantano tAnEen SemtE

It was originally intended for the harbor, but the artists may have used it elsewhere.

Hope that helps,

RAWA

After decades, we can finally lay this one to rest. We have canon definitions for the two mystery words: bantano means "island", and tAnE means "welcome". I'll be adding this on my Myst info site very soon.

Exciting news! This answers the even older question concerning the common late D'ni term for Ae'gura, translated in the Book of Ti'ana as The Island. Though I wonder what happened to the accent on the ay of taynee.

It's also encouraging for the theory that bahntahno contains ahno. We can speculate as to the meaning of bahnt: maybe something to do with "land/ground" or "hill/mountain"?

I've added the words to my copy of the D'ni to English dictionary and updated the references to it in my articles about the waterfront and canyon mall.

As for the accent, I looked at the image file, and the letter A in tAnEen is almost totally defaced, so it's easy to see why we missed the accent mark all this time.

Part of the problem is that we thought we already knew the word for island - rinto. However, that was a guess, so it might have been wrong all along. The word for ground is gahlon, but we don't have words for land, hill or mountain yet, so maybe you're on to something.

Though I hope there were not some clues that he just got tired of waiting for someone to find.

It would have been a big clue if the inscription had been limited to the arch and ferry terminal as intended. Unfortunately, "The Island welcomes you" doesn't make a lot of sense above doors in City neighborhoods!

Very true. Since the inscription appears above the doorways of both the neighborhood classroom and meditation chamber ("egg room"), I thought that was a bit of a goof too. Seems a very strange thing to have children see when going to lessons each day.